INTERLANGUAGE FEATURES OF SIGN LANGUAGES (ACCORDING TO THE MATERIAL OF GESTURES IN SIGN FORM)

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the features of gestures deaf people use in their national Sign Languages. In Sign Languages, almost every word has a sign equivalent. National Sign Languages are characterized by variability, which is manifested in the use by carriers of one Sign Languages of its various dialects and borrowings from other Sign Languages. This leads to the appearance in them of the same or similar gestures with different meaning. In our study we compare elements of Russian Sign Language with other Signs Language to find out their similarities and differences. Our study is based on the elements of our own corpus. The corpus includes the most commonly used signs of Russian Sign Languages of various topics; the signs are written in the SignWriting notation. The written form of a gesture allows us to look at the structure of the gesture in a convenient static form. The form also allows us to identify the features of gesture formation and to highlight the common features of each of the Sign Languages. This allows us to transmit and store important information to use in various fields of human activity. The purpose of our work is to collect and compare gestures of Russian Sign Languages and some of the most interesting national sign systems in order to identify their common features. To solve this problem, we investigated the same gestures of Russian Sign Languages and national Sign Languages; the gestures have the same or different meaning. We give examples that describe the general and distinctive features of such gestures. If we know the specifics of gestures in different Signs Languages, we will better understand the languages and make gesture speech unambiguous and easier to translate. Studies in the field of Sign Languages in various countries are still ongoing. Our results can be used by specialists in Sign Languages recording and in machine translation systems in order to recognize speech more accurately.

Keywords

• Gestures
• Sign Language
• SignWriting notation
• corpus of gestures of Russian Sign Language
• Sign Language variability
• equivalent and meaningful gestures